Boulder developer Jim Loftus won't take "no" from the City of Louisville -- at least not yet.

Loftus, whose proposed high-end residential and retail development on South Boulder Road was roundly rejected by the city's Planning Commission last month, is taking his plan right to the City Council this time.

On Tuesday, Loftus will present his vision -- albeit scaled back and reined in -- for rejuvenating the former site of a Safeway grocery store that has sat empty for nearly two years. Instead of 180 residential units and 10,000 square feet of retail at the corner of South Boulder Road and Centennial Drive, the plan has been reduced to 160 units and 9,500 square feet of retail. And no building will exceed three stories.

But for many Louisville residents, the new blueprints are no better than the old.

Aquiles La Grave, a 10-year resident of the city who heads up a group opposing the project, said the five-building project simply doesn't fit in aesthetically with the north Louisville neighborhood he lives in.

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"That degree of density will disrupt our neighborhood and is completely out of character with our neighborhood," he said. "It would be like a sore thumb sticking out."

He took out an ad in the Camera this weekend that expresses the objections of many of his neighbors.

"I think we can support higher density and a more modern aesthetic, but when you're going into an established neighborhood with a jarring proposal, it just doesn't work," La Grave said. "It is a site-specific issue."

Bill Staton, who has lived behind the Safeway for 35 years, said he would like to see the city try harder to attract new retail outlets to the five-acre site before approving a largely residential project there. He feels the rest of the businesses at the Village Square shopping center, which Safeway anchored starting in 1978, will suffer even more than they have if they don't get a boost from new retail activity.

Project opponents plan to pack City Hall on Tuesday to make their objections known to the seven members of City Council.

Councilwoman Emily Jasiak, who represents the ward where the Safeway is located, said she has received a lot of emails on the topic but wants to listen to the formal presentation before commenting.

The site represents the first major redevelopment project in Louisville outside of the core downtown area.

"If you build the wrong thing, that would be worse than what is there now," Staton said.

Planning commissioners echoed many of the same sentiments on March 8, when they shot down Loftus' proposal 5-1. Chairman Jeff Lipton said the project was too dense and would change the character of the surrounding neighborhoods.

Lipton and his colleagues may get the chance to revisit the revised version of Loftus' plan after Tuesday, as city staff is recommending to City Council to remand the proposal back to the Planning Commission for further study and another vote before it comes back to council.

Loftus couldn't be reached last week and his chief architect, Mike Mulhern, didn't return a call for comment.

But the project has its supporters. Brent Wilson, who has lived just north of the Safeway site for 25 years, said a high-end residential community would boost property values in his neighborhood and enhance the business community along South Boulder Road. He said the vast, empty parking lot at Village Square shopping center is an eyesore that needs to be revamped.

"I would love to see a Louisville with less blacktop, with fewer empty parking lots," Wilson said.

Loftus' traffic engineer did a study showing that the project would generate 60 percent less traffic congestion in the area than a fully functioning grocery store. The majority of parking for the development would be internal to the project and off the street.

Wilson said far worse projects could end up there that immediately meet the site's community commercial zoning designation. Loftus' project would require the city to change the area's current zoning to move forward. Wilson called Loftus' vision a "good faade" for his neighborhood.

"If we aren't careful, we will find ourselves obliged to support some project that we don't want and that does not improve our neighborhood but still meets the zoning perfectly in a way that the city would be hard-pressed to deny them," he said.

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